Goodbye!

They call Cape Town “the Mother City,” I’m not sure why.  But it was very much like a mother to me.  She took me in and comforted me and fixed me all up.  Held me close until I was okay to leave.  I’m not okay to leave forever, but for now I must say goodbye.

Though sad to leave, I had entirely too much fun and found so much joy, peace and love while there, that I can’t help but smile on the way home. All we ever want is more time.  We have to find a way to be content.

I have still not fully digested this trip and imagine the next few weeks getting back to “normal” will be too much of a struggle.  So I’ve decided not to get back to normal.

I don’t want to lose the me I found while I was there.  I may have been a little lost before going and I’m not sure if I found myself because I left or because I was gone.  Either way, someday I will come back to this painfully beautiful country.

My time in Cape Town was the perfect balance of work, play, writing, living, enjoying nature, drinking, eating, loving, smiling, laughing, taking time to myself, facing fears, letting go of the past, dancing and just l-i-v-i-n, man. ; )

Thursday, the weather in Cape Town was insanely dramatic.  I had such a heavy heart leaving this place of wonder.  The anxiety from running around all morning and packing just in time in the intense humidity had built and built until it was almost unbearable.  My heart felt like it would explode.

I got to Cape Town International, hugged Denver, my driver goodbye, and checked into my flight.  After heading to my gate, I grabbed a Castle Lager, my last for a while.  As I sit drinking in the country, literally and figuratively, in my bright pink shirt amongst business type Europeans sipping Peronis and watching an English soccer game, I still can’t believe the blue mountains are real.  That the landscape is not actually painted on the sky.  That, even at an airport, a beer still costs less than 3 dollars. That this city exists.  The people, the experience, everything is beyond surreal.  It is unbelievable that a month has passed and at the same time unbelievable that I did as much as I did in a month. I should be tired, but I feel so rejuvenated.

At times I was frustrated with South Africa; how slow people respond to my press inquiries, how everyone’s late, how the government doesn’t seem to work.  But then I think maybe it’s because the people of South Africa appreciate something we don’t always remember to; life.

All the little details like being on time don’t matter, but enjoying each day, whether that means walking slower, taking a 2 hour lunch break, or simply skipping out on work, as long as you enjoy each moment it’s okay.

However, that eagerness for life is also mixed with a type of hopelessness I’m unfamiliar with.  The people in the townships seem content there.  The ideas of upward mobility and the “American Dream” that’s been shoved down my throat since I can remember, they just aren’t present.

It makes me wonder, what’s the “South African dream?”  Is there one?

Maybe it’s simply because life is short, literally, the life expectancy for male and female is both below 55.

Point being, my frustrations can easily be put aside. The atmosphere almost every where is just too laid back to allow you to get upset. So yeah, I took a beach day or two myself! ; )  I still did extensive work in the journalism office, thank you very much!

I am ever so in love with this country; with the friends I made, with Latifa, with the biscuit mill, with Jade on Thursday nights, with dancing to terrible songs that my friends in America will want to kill me for when I play them endlessly, with the winelands, with the beaches, with Camps Bay, with Goldfish, with sunsets, with the babies and security guards that play and say “hey mamaaa,” respectively, when I get home from work, the permanent presence of sand in our flat, the trial and error way of life, my walk to work, the beautiful people, the mountains and, of course, my love affair with the sea continues, especially in South Africa.  You are hard pressed to find things I didn’t like about Cape Town.

This trip has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. I found everything I was looking for and so much more.  I have to keep this trip in my heart forever. I have to go back.

I dig music! (part II)

As one of my last blog posts, I wanted to put a few more of my favorite songs I picked up in South Africa that I’m already missing!  I don’t tend to go out dancing much back home and I never listen to the radio, so most of these songs, though pretty popular, were new to me and became a representation of my night life in South Africa.  On any given night you could find me and my friends dancing, most likely, to all of these songs until the early hours of the morning.  It may not have the same affect, I guess you just had to be there…

and of course THE defining song of my trip….honestly they even played this song when I was bungee jumping.  You can’t go ANYWHERE in Cape Town without hearing this song. 🙂

My own personal hell…

…Frankfurt airport.  I absolutely hate this prison.  And it’s honestly not the layover!  Five hours would be manageable if there was something to do, or someone remotely friendly to talk to, or even something to look at other than steel and blank walls.  On one of the quarter-mile long hallways I passed through, there were a series of the lamest advertising billboards I’ve ever seen, one of which contained the phrase “Imagine your future at Frankfurt Airport” or “Imagine the future at Frankfurt Airport.”  One of the two.  Either way the thought of spending any more time in this airport other than the next five hours made me cringe.  I hope I never have to come back here.

I’ll die if it’s snowing in Canada and my flight to Toronto is delayed.  I’d rather risk the crash.  It’s that bad.

As I write this, I’m sitting at a cafe drinking a coffee with real sugar, because why would they have Splenda or Sweet and Low or Equal or any other substitute other than white sugar.  I knowwwww that stuff causes cancer but still, I like it better. Further, I’m angered at the fact that this cafe/restaurant is the only comfortable somewhat dark place to sit and the lady at the counter is confused when I ask her if there’s an outlet any where that I can plug my computer into.  Nope. It’s in this moment that I realize just how American I am.

Really I’m just cranky because I just had to wait 30 minutes (silver lining 30 less minutes I have to wait in a shiny steel lounge watching as they fuel up the plane, load up the fake meals, load the baggage, etc.) to get through security only to have some pissed off European woman with a butch hair cut feel me up.  They are so particular about the way you go through security yet they don’t make you take off your shoes and almost every person sets off the censor as you walk through and THEN you have to take off your shoes.  The women and the men at the security checkpoint laugh and tell jokes in German don’t speak directly to you and take their time viewing the radar screen and personally searching you.

How am I supposed to positively endure my 5 hour lay over when that’s how it starts? At 5 am none-the-less after an eleven hour flight. Seriously?!

After my cafe adventure I look to find an outlet, also nearly impossible.  I stop at a Lufthansa desk to see if she can tell me where my flight will be leaving from, now in 3 hours, and she is so annoyed, cuts me off and tells me it’s way too early.  She also doesn’t bother to respond when I say “Good morning, how are you?”  What is it with this place that makes everybody so angry?! I blame it on the over use of steel and grey tones.  I have found a “leisure zone” at the end of a hall that’s under construction.  It’s at least got comfy chairs, but I’m sure is miles away from my departure gate.

To add insult to injury was the article I read in the USA Today on the flight here.  Excited to see an American newspaper departing Cape Town I grabbed the free copy of the day old USA Today.  Though strange to see the difference in headlines and tone compared to the South African news outlets, I was still excited to have a copy….until I got to page 8 A in which the feature is “Best airport club bets for the jet set.”  Complete with photos and details of the most luxurious airport lounges in the world where interviewees talk about large comfy armchairs and wi-fi.

And on another ironic note,  in the middle of Thursday’s Cape Argus newspaper is an article about the mass amounts of snow that hit the States the other day complete with a photo of a flipped car in Salem, Massachusetts.

Ahh reality, how I have not missed you.

(More S.A. posts to come!)

Kirstenbosch Picnic

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden is world acclaimed, and only costs 40 rand (around 6 dollars) to get into, hardly a price to pay for what I imagine somewhere in heaven to be like.  The garden is never ending, literally, as I learned several times when I got lost on the paths up, down and around the hills of the greenest grass and prettiest flowers.

For one of the volunteers birthdays, we packed bottles of delicious Stellenbosch wine, blocks of cheese and cake and blankets to head to this oasis of perfection.  I felt like this is what rich people used to do in the countryside of England, there was just something so unique about it.  Probably the most perfect way to spend a lazy, sunny, Sunday afternoon!

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The Winelands

Saturday morning after two hours of sleep, I awoke in a hurry to meet Archi at the gate on time at 9 am.  I don’t know why, but for some reason, I don’t need sleep in South Africa!  Maybe it’s because I will be hibernating in my ice box of an apartment by the end of the week.

Me and my comrades headed off to Stellenbosch to partake in some wine tasting.  As we picked everyone up for the wine tour, we chatted about the antics we all got into the night before, some of us more tired and less chatty than others.  Archi comically played a song for us that talked about “all the crazy things I did last night.”  He knew it had to be appropritae seeing as he had dropped some of us off at Long Street at 1:30.

Stellenbosch, is a beautiful oasis of miles of vineyards and fields surrounded by rolling hills.  It could easily be the scene for an old Italian romantic movie.  Not so romantic given our motley crew, but still, ever so charming. : )

 

We stopped at the first vineyard, the Delaire Graff Estate.  This place has mastered the concepts of luxury and relaxation.  The entire building is in pristine shape and decorated with only the finest art and furniture.  We are the first to arrive, but by the time we leave much of the outdoor deck and indoor dining room are filled.  we try savuginon blancs, roses and some reds, one bordeaux blend I find to be my favorite.  Before I can even imagine it it’s 1:00.

Archi hurries us along as we drive windows down hands out to another little wine oasis for some fantastic lunch and photo taking.  The flowers and tall grass that encompass this little stop are wild and beautiful. I feel like I’m in the Queen’s garden just casually lunching and sipping wine.

We head to our last wine tasting of the day (yes, we only made it to two) pleasantly surprised to find that here at Fairviews we can also sample cheese.  Full and tired we head home…but not before we stop and see a cheetah.  This is South Africa, why wouldn’t there be a cheetah viewing place on the side of the highway?

I get home and am exhausted, from the wine, from the sun, from the emotions of the day, but mostly from the fact that I went out the past three nights in a row.  I sleep, finally.

Apartheid Photos

As I constantly struggle to find the right words, I heavily rely on photos to help tell a story.  Magnum Photos is my all time favorite photo website with extensive heaps of photos from historical to just-for-fun, old, new, revolutionary, beautiful, ugly, famous, infamous, color and black and white.

As a follow up to my post about Krog’s book, check out Magnum’s apartheid collection.

From one journalist to another.

I recently finished reading Country of my Skull, by Antjie Krog, a native South African journalist.  The book is an account of Krog’s coverage of the Truth and Reconciliation Trials and examines not only the struggles of redefining a country that has been through atrocity after atrocity, but the struggle of defining truth and reconciliation and what that means to different people. 

Krog’s desperation for a peaceful country is so evident it’s heartbreaking.  From this book, I have simply glimpsed how long, life-shattering, continuing and frustrating the road to redemption was/is for native South Africans.

As an American, I learned extensively about the Civil War and 1960s America, so the concepts of blacks being oppressed by white people is clearly not a new one.  I naively thought that apartheid would be similar to those atrocities and denials of basic human rights. While I am not undermining the atrocities that happened in the Civil War or in the 1960s to blacks, what happened to the black population in South Africa shook me to the core and gave me nightmares. Gross human rights violations don’t even begin to encompass the pain and terror I read about in Krog’s book.  And she has this way of writing that literally transcends her feelings of anger, heartbreak and tenderness into the reader.

The accounts that are recorded in the book make me shiver and my stomach ache.  The treatment of women, the cold-blooded murder of children dismissed as though killing a child were as normal as going out for a cup of coffee; it’s beyond  devastating.

I found the below account, not to be the most gruesome, but the most captivating of the image of what South Africa looked like immediately after apartheid.  Krog’s moving writing is demonstrated as well.

Father Michael Lapsley: Anglican priest and ANC member, Lapsley was the victim of a 1990 parcel bomb that resulted in the loss of his hands and an eye. (The ANC African National Congress governing party currently, founded in 1912 as a liberation movement; banned in 1960 by the apartheid government.)

“Michael Lapsley: ‘when I made my political choice, I often thought of death.  What I never thought of was being maimed.  After the explosion, I felt that it would have been better if I were dead, because now I am someone without hands and I had never…never before met someone without hands

‘Hands transmit love…tenderness…I endured an endless and intensely overwhelming sorrow over the loss of my hands…when they brought me the prosthetic hands, I started crying…because they were so ugly…Now I have these…and it is actually amazing what they can do…”

It is in these stainless-steel pincers that Father Lapsley raised to take the oath before his submission to the Truth Commission: ‘so help me god…’ But it is also these pincers that prevent him from wiping away his tears like other victims.  When their stories cut too close, victims often bury their faces in their hands, and wipe their eyes with tissues.  But how do you hold the fragile veil of a tissue in such pincers?  How do you complete the simple action of blowing your nose?  Several times the pincers move towards his face in a reflex action–as if he want to cover his face with his hands–and every movement flashes the inhumanity of South Africa’s past into the hall…hard, shiny, and sterile.”

As I said, this is not even close to the most gruesome of apartheid survirovs’ accounts but captures the break down of the human condition.

What’s even more terrifying about apartheid and speaks to just how viciously oppressed blacks were, is the evil that was sparked in people.  The opposition groups that were led by anti apartheid political activists so too have blood on their hands.  It makes me scared to be human.  That we are capable of treating each other so.

Krog, like a good journalist does, gets at both sides of every coin. She gives examples of atrocities committed by both blacks and whites.  But she also tries to get into the minds of both black and white survivors and how the difficulty lies in moving past those perceptions.

In a conversation she has with clinical psychologist Nomfundo Walaza

In the Free State, I’m usually confronted with the heart of things.  I tell Walaza ‘ a white woman said to me, ‘I don’t even watch the Truth Commission on television–because all you see there is a sea of hatred.’ I told her I attend most of the hearings, and that is not true.  There is really no hatred.”

‘That is pure projection,’ says Walaza.  ‘Firstly, she knows instinctively that if apartheid had been done to her, she would have hated.  And secondly, whites prefer to think that they are being hated; then they don’t need to change.  It goes to the whole nation of saying: “Blacks are so angry with me, there is no way I can go and live with them because they are going to kill me.  And we shouldn’t bring black people here because they essentially hate us.”’”

She concludes the book by attempting to summarize the identity crisis of both white and black people.  This passage further attempts to demonstrate the state South Africa was in post apartheid.

“I thought afterward: we are trapped.  If there is no forum in which people can think what they want, and others worry about what they owe, then both are trapped in anger and guilt.  By not determining precisely what is needed, the whites are exposed to constant reproach.  If you give specifics they can be met.  And should one not also be willing to be available as a punching bag?  Can that be part of the deal?  Just shut your big mouths when we blame you–for this, after all, is the only bloody thing we ask while rebuilding ourselves, by ourselves.

The two nations (she’s referring to ANC President Thabo Mbeki’s “two nation” speech in which he says that South Africa is still divided into rich white and poor black), one by injury, the other by guilt, and the first reaction is to withdraw from each other.  People withdraw physically or mentally from each other after injury.  A mother in front of the Truth Commission said that she did not want even to see a white person.  People are leaving the country or pulling back into their own family or group spaces of language or history.  Academics say that this withdrawal last one second or for centuries, but that it is a necessary and healthy psychological response.”

This book was published in 1998.  Her conclusion that the struggle is in the identity and the defining, is still evident and can be seen in most places of Cape Town.  From what I hear other places in South Africa aren’t as segregated as Cape Town remains to be.  When speaking with a colleague about my blog I thought for some posts it would be interesting to give them a label of black or white.  But that’s a generalization and a bit dramatic. For the most part, the places you go are either predominantly white, Camps Bay for example, or black, i.e. Khayletisha.

Yet, at the same time, I hardly see any hostility in people and I can’t help but wonder if it’s because people are just too damn tired, from fighting and hating one another.

My sister gave me this book for Christmas and told me it would be a good idea to read while I’m here, she was so right.  While sometimes I think I live in a fantasy world of the beauties of Cape Town, reading that book throughout my adventures was a constant reminder of the horror that paraded this land ever so recently.

Just another Cape Town sunset…

Camps Bay may be my favorite place in all of Cape Town.  The sunsets are unbelievable and the atmosphere of the chic bars on Sunday afternoons redefines “Sunday Funday.”  Dressed in white and bright summer clothes you mingle with the rich, famous, beautiful and narcissistic people of Cape Town.  Men buy you mojitos and jump over plush chairs to hand you glasses of champagne.  But more beautiful then the people are the sunsets, that so many of these regulars don’t even glance at.

Camera in hand, I push past the modern day Gatsby characters and run across the street, down the bank to the beach where the wind is blowing the white sand hard in to my legs and my hair blows about my face.

Enjoy the view, I did! : )

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I dig music!

In order to avoid the drone of the air conditioners in the Cape Chameleon office and to better infuse my concentration, I spend my day listening to tunes.  Music is something I will never be able to go anywhere without, so it’s no surprise it’s become such a constant part of this trip.

Ask my mother, who incessantly probably said “turn your music down!” to me almost as much as she told me she loved me when I was an angry adolescent blasting the likes of Nirvana just before dinner.  Or my neighbors in Portland who are often awaken on a Monday night to an intense 80s music dance party downstairs.  Or any of the people from lovers to my grandfather who I have made mix tapes for. You get the picture. I dig music.

I have fallen in love with Arcade Fire’s new album, specifically Suburban War and Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), as well as the Broken Bells.  I think The Ghost Inside is my favorite track.  Check these songs…then go and buy their albums on i-Tunes.

Further more, our beloved taxi driver, Archi, has an array of tunes from Gaga to classic South African songs that we spend our journeys with him listening to. We cannot even fathom singing as well as Archi, never the less, we join in.  If you see a gold Toyota filled with girls headed to Camps Bay singing Weekend Special chances are that’s me and some of the Projects Abroad volunteers. : ) Enjoy!

Sun and cheesecake infused afternoons.

As my time is winding down here in Cape Town and the snow is piling up back home, I’ve been trying to spend as much time on the beach and in the sun as possible. Yes this means I’m finding ways to leave work early and make my way down Muziemberg, St. James and Kalk Bay way.

Every time I head to this quaint, quiet little area of Cape Town I fall a little more in love; with the ocean, the people, the laid back atmosphere, the heaps of cute little antique, book, record and clothing stores, and the cafes!

Which brings me to Sirocco, aka a little slice of heaven located just behind Kalk Bay Railway Station. As it was my roomie’s last day we decided to stop by her favorite dessert destination for some cake and coffee.  What better a way to follow up an afternoon nap on the beach of St. James? I’m so spoiled.

The cheesecake in this oasis of calm was the perfect fluffy accompaniment to the cafe’s atmosphere. Bathed in the summer colors of beige, blue and white, the cafe is centered around a palm tree with a variety of pillowy seats in the open air deck that allows the sun to hit most customers, though shade is readily available to those in fear of the sun I so eagerly soak up.

Not only do they great you with slices of watermelon at Sirocco, the tap water comes with lemon and mint.

I still can’t decide which was more perfect, the combination of sun and wind that creates the ideal temperature or the sweet cheesecake topped with a tangy fruit sauce.

Today is Friday and we get out of work an hour earlier.  Obviously I’m skipping lunch and leaving at 2 to head back to the seemingly unbelievable seascape that I’m ever so in love with. A week from today I’ll be home amongst pasty faces and snowbanks.  The thought of going home is the only negative thing about being in Cape Town.